


The Beginning

by FlorBexter



Series: Breaking the firewall verse [1]
Category: HIStory3 - 圈套 | HIStory3: Trapped
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Hacker!Zhao Zi, Jack the Mercenary, Jack works for Tang Yi, M/M, part of a series, trapped gift exchange, undercover!jack
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-31
Updated: 2019-12-31
Packaged: 2021-02-25 07:42:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,046
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22052302
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FlorBexter/pseuds/FlorBexter
Summary: The Beginning - Part 1 of 3“It’s nice to have another computer crack on the team,” Meng Shao Fei said and looked towards the rest area of the department where Zhao Zi was doing a handstand while another police officer held a piece of paper in front of his face for him to read out loud. If Jack interpreted the yelling correctly there was a family-sized pizza at stake.
Relationships: Jack | Fang Liang Dian/Zhao Li An | Zhao Zi
Series: Breaking the firewall verse [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1587262
Comments: 16
Kudos: 155
Collections: Trapped Gift Exchange





	The Beginning

**Author's Note:**

  * For [searchingpegasus](https://archiveofourown.org/users/searchingpegasus/gifts).



> Thank you, Lydia (@searchingpegasus) for this nice prompt and the permission to do this as part of a series.  
> Please note that this is an AU in which Jack is working for Tang Yi (and not double-crossing him) while he pretends to be Chief Yan's man.

**The Beginning**

If someone had asked Jack how he would envision the home of a hacker, he would have succumbed to the cliché in his head. The basement of a family home, or a dirty room in a shared flat. Energy drinks everywhere, next to empty, mouldy boxes of ramen. The smell of despair and virginity.

Computer parts would lay around, and the closet would be full of dark clothes with prints on them only computer nerds would understand.

And maybe his imagination was over the top and he would have accepted a flat flooded with light in the expensive part of Taipei… but this?

The door had been unlocked and he had felt a spike of anger at the discovery. He let his hand hover over the little knickknacks in the shelves. The cosiness oozed from every corner of the house, the plants were well cared for and it smelled like someone had cooked a hearty meal not so long ago. There were signs that only one person lived here – the shoes, all the same size and style; the one set of dishes, lying ready to be cleaned in the sink – but it wasn’t hard to imagine that it also could be a family home. The neighbours were either older couples or little families. It was an area full of lush front yards and Jack knew that even though there weren’t security cameras, the watchful eyes of the neighbours were far more hindering for his mission.

And now that he knew who _he_ was, he had to be more careful than ever.

His eyes landed on the photograph of a young boy and his grandmother and he still couldn’t get his head around the fact that it was _him_.

This was going to be a problem, he thought.

+++

“Really?” Tang Yi looked as surprised as Jack had felt but Jack tried to radiate a smug energy of ‘I knew it all along’.

Tang Yi’s unbelieving face transformed into a soft chuckle and then he had to hide his wide grin behind his hands. He looked like he was enjoying these new developments tremendously.

“Does Chief Yan know about this?”

“Not yet,” Jack answered and was curious about how Tang Yi wanted to continue the little game he played with the _Interpol Division_.

It wasn’t every day that the client who thought he was working for them to bring down his real client wanted him to find a hacker who was already in their employment. It was time that he made a chart about his involvement in all of this.

“Do you know if he’s still active?”

“The parts of the internet I searched through aren’t that easy to navigate. We’re literally at the source. I would like to find out…” Jack had to pause for a second because the excitement made his spine tingle. “I want to find out face-to-face.”

Tang Yi nodded and leaned back in his big office chair.

“I think you should play this how you want to, no instructions from me. Just… don’t let Zhao Zi do what Chief Yan wants him to do to our network.”

The fun thing about working with and for Tang Yi was that he wasn’t predictable. It was exciting and he gave Jack a lot of leeway in how to handle _problems_. As a mercenary, he had carved a space for himself, had used a lot of personalities, a lot of disguises. Maybe he liked it so much because the special forces had been a place of conformity. Everyone had been the same, had to dress the same, had to succumb to orders from above. Now he could be whoever he wanted.

He would miss the leather jacket and his gloves, but his red hair was here to stay. The glasses made him look younger and he hoped approachable. It had been laughably simple to talk Chief Yan into the plan. The way he saw Tang Yi as his arch-enemy made him easy to manipulate and it was always amusing because Jack knew that Tang Yi was only peripheral thinking about the Chief. He was a tiny blob on his radar while for Chief Yan Tang Yi was his white whale.

The one consuming Tang Yi’s thoughts was someone else.

“Meng Shao Fei,” Jack repeated, and he had to congratulate his own forward-thinking. He had refused to appear as Tang Yi’s right hand in public otherwise this man in front of him would have a file on him already.

“It’s nice to have another computer crack on the team,” Meng Shao Fei said and looked towards the rest area of the department where Zhao Zi was doing a handstand while another police officer held a piece of paper in front of his face for him to read out loud. If Jack interpreted the yelling correctly there was a family-sized pizza at stake.

“Zhao Li An, you can call me Zhao Zi,” said Zhao Zi fifteen minutes later, flushed and out of breath. He had won the pizza, of course, and Jack couldn’t stop the admiration taking root. Curiosity, he decided. It was curiosity.

“Fang Liang Dian,” Jack said and shook Zhao Zi’s hand. He was surprised by his own desire to ask Zhao Zi to call him Jack. The sweetness Zhao Zi radiated was…weird and Jack really… _really_ wanted to mess him up.

“A-Dian, then,” Zhao Zi decided with a wide smile and pushed him with eager hands forward to the desks.

“The captain said you’re some kind of team-encroaching IT specialist?”

“Just here to help out wherever I’m needed now that cybercrimes are on the rise.”

“And you’re so fit too!”, Zhao Zi exclaimed and suddenly Jack was groped. He looked down at the fingers on his chest and wasn’t sure if he should laugh or appear shocked. He had left some crumps in the dark spaces of the internet, some little traps in forums and sites for classified ads which clearly had been a way to connect the shadiest kind of people, but no response. So, the question was: was Zhao Zi no longer active as a hacker or had he laughed at Jack’s poor attempts to lure him out?

“Cut it out Zhao Zi!”, Shao Fei yelled from the other part of the room and Zhao Zi shot him a cheeky smile after he took his hands back.

"We have cleared a desk for colleagues who don't have a permanent one in our division. I hope it's suitable."

It was. It was perfect. He sat across from Zhao Zi, so he was able to interact and observe him. He didn’t like the open space concept of the department and got an itch at the back of his head about the thought that everyone walking behind him could see what he was doing. He tried to calm himself down with the knowledge that he wouldn’t stay here for long. He was good at what he did (maybe even the best) so finding out if Zhao Zi was still active as a hacker shouldn’t be a problem.

It was a problem if an amusing one.

Police work was tiring. Jack was only an observer because even Chief Yan with his need to expose Tang Yi as fast as possible wouldn’t dare to let Jack impose as a police officer. Therefore, he had to sit down and watch while Zhao Zi and his colleagues ran around, filed out tons and tons of paperwork, had discussions with the prosecution office on a daily basis and ate a lot of unhealthy food.

It was amusing to see that Meng Shao Fei had a breakdown over Tang Yi weekly, something Jack had yet to decide if he was going to tell his boss and the fact that Zhao Zi did only the basics when it came to his, hidden, computer skills.

They got storage disks plenty, or cell phones, or USB sticks. But all Zhao Zi did, even if a case was urgent, was searching for information like he was going strict by the book.

It made Jack even more curious, and it infuriated him a bit. There was a genius hidden behind the sunny smile and agile body and if he had to witness a flick-flack one more time, while Zhao Zi’s belly was showing, he was going to…

“Did you make that by yourself?”

Jack was pulled out of his thoughts and stared at Zhao Zi who was leaning towards his lunchbox with open interest.

“Yes,” he answered and suddenly Zhao Zi was almost sitting on his lap.

Wait…

“You want to try?”, he asked and if he had known the key to having Zhao Zi in proximity was food, he would have explored that angle earlier.

“A-Dian! This is delicious!” Zhao Zi proceeded to make noises that verged on the line to obscene, but Jack knew that there was no intent behind Zhao Zi’s behaviour, so he just smiled.

He knew, first-hand, that what you see wasn't always what you got. He had been betrayed too many times to believe that and had been a traitor himself to not know that there always could be a knife waiting to be stabbed in someone’s back.

But…

But he also knew people. Knew how to read them, knew to look for cues in mimic and gesture, knew that there were indicators no one could fake. Which meant he knew that Zhao Zi was _good_ … in a way even pure and yes, also naïve. But also, not. It was fascinating to see him talking about horrendous crimes while he still believed that all in all the world was a good place. After he talked to victims or witnesses, they, more often than not, smiled. Sometimes through tears but he gave them, with his unlimited optimism, hope.

And Jack began to feel that Zhao Zi influenced him.

And he needed that to stop.

Tang Yi may have told him to play this operation how he wanted to but there was this feral glint in his eyes whenever the topic became Meng Shao Fei. That was the reason for Jack to make sure to be extra careful as he broke into his flat.

Meng Shao Fei and Zhao Zi were close. Even for two people who went to the same Police College, even for two people who worked together and were considered partners who couldn’t be separated. They weren’t lovers, even if some in the police force believed that. Jack’s early jobs had been about infidelity and finding proof of that. He could spot secret affairs from a mile away.

Meng Shao Fei and Zhao Zi weren’t lovers, but there were, in a way, _more_ than just best friends.

At least, Jack thought, Meng Shao Fei had a security system in place, as opposed to Zhao Zi, in which house Jack had broken into more times than he could count.

He knew about _The Board_ , of course. Zhao Zi spoke about it often enough. The drawing of Tang Yi was as bad as predicted and Jack took a photo.

It was a typical bachelor’s pad. A bit unlived in, but Jack knew that Meng Shao Fei practically lived in the police department, so the empty fridge was no surprise. The bathroom told him that not many visitors had the pleasure of showering in it and the bedroom was neat, no dust in sight.

A bit boring, at first glance but Jack knew that there was no reason for the wooden floor to be so worn-out next to the nightstand except Meng Shao Fei had a habit to look at the wall. Even if there hung a mirror in the past the worn areas were too close to the wall to let that be an explanation.

Gloves were the way to go he decided and moved some items in the bedroom carefully. Nothing happened. The next step was to feel if there was a hidden panel in the wall and yes… with a small _whoosh_ part of the wall slid backwards and then to the side and revealed a tiny hidden space.

Another board greeted Jack and his eyes followed the red threads who ended on three pictures. Of Tang Yi, Chief Yan and him.

“Shit,” he said with feeling.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much for reading! I hope you had fun and are not cross with me to end this story this way. We'll see us in the next part "The Middle". 
> 
> As an afterthought: This is a world in which the reason for Shao Fei chasing after Tang Yi isn't Li Zhen's murder.


End file.
